About me: 24 years old, living in the UK, just finished University a few months ago and start my first 'real' job on Monday (marketing and e-commerce, woo). My name's Richard, and I like to play video games, hang out with friends, the usual stuff. I had a bout of depression whilst I was at Uni which was the 'kick start' to start going gym and fix my lifestyle, however now I have no subsidised University gym I needed a new routine that wouldn't require expensive memberships . For the last 6 months I've not had a fitness routine other than cardio when I feel like it, so I'm a little more out of shape than I'd like to be.

I control my diet fairly well already (I'm a huge fan of Kippers); since about November I've dropped from 69.5kg to 64.2kg (or 153lb to 141lb). Hoping to keep this up, my target lean weight is aroud 130lb which is light I admit, but I'm only 5'3 so it places me in the healthy BMI range. After the body fat percentage is down though I expect working out will add onto that so weight isn't the number one concern.

Week 1 - Level 1

Day 1 (Monday) - 32 rounds
It was fairly easy on the muscles (though I was out of breath and had to keep stopping) although I am doing substitutions for pull ups at the minute. I can do chin ups (slowly), but pullups I can't manage one, so I've been giving myself a jumping help, then letting myself down from the bar slowly.

On Tuesday I went for a 2.3 mile jog, took me 27 minutes. I'm very slow, but I didn't have to stop and walk once, so that's practically a personal best for me.

Day 2 (Wednesday) - Total time: 2:46
round 1: 31.85
round 2: 29.54
round 3: 31.98
round 4: 34.94
round 5: 37.81
I alternated between pull ups and chin ups this time; again for the pull ups I 'cheated' but I did the chin ups properly. I found it very easy and thought I must have done something wrong to get such a fast time. I re-read the SimpleFit instructions and realised I was doing my exercises quite quickly. Is this necessarily a bad thing? I also did some lunges as a warm-down where I held the position for 10 seconds, and 5 x 30 seconds of plank. I read these kind of exercises should help to promote my posture which isn't the best really.

Terrific start! Welcome to the group. I'll see you on fitocracy as well.

I think doing the exercises quick is fine. Indeed, you have to get there as the levels get more intense. But, I'm also an advocate of being careful about form. For several of us, Day 2 is especially critical for watching form. Some don't worry about timing on Day 2 at all. Just focus on the reps and on form. I do keep time on D2, but always try to keep the D2 focus on form over speed.

Was a lot harder to do this week, just because I was getting tired out. I didn't have to substitute chin ups or pull ups until around round 10 though, whereas before I couldn't do a single pull up, and only a few chin ups. A huge improvement in just a week. I left it very late to do my excercises - started at 9.30pm. My excuse was that I moved into a new place yesterday and started my new job today, but I know that's not a real excuse. But still, got the excercise in all the same.

Warmed up with windmill and shoulder dislocations. Too tired to lunge and plank today.

Was pretty hard this week. The difficult is so much more than level one. Got it all done, and concentrated on keeping my form good, whilst still trying to get in a good time, which basically meant less resting except between sets where I pause the clock and get my breath back.

Hey, those are great numbers for this week so far! I agree with KTG on the Day 2 workouts - the time is secondary to keeping good form, since the other two workouts encourage speed instead. Going slower on each rep will make the exercises harder, but also will help you gain strength better than fast and potentially sloppy reps.

Great D2 time! If you're doing that with good form you are getting a very solid start. I would expect you'll start seeing D1 go stronger now. If your experience is like mine, the pull-ups on D3 will stay pretty hard to get through.

The pulls and chins were actually quite manageable. Very difficult, but I just split them into three (4 chins, 5 pulls, 4 chins) and spread them over 2 minutes. The push ups were very hard - as with last week I overestimated my ability as I find them quite easy to do one, but I split it into 13/13 and the second set... I held my breath completely through the last 4 or so because it was so difficult. Squats as usual, fairly easy, but concentrating on keeping the back straight and shoulders back for good form means that doing a lot get tiring. It reminds me of swimming - the legs move 'effortlessly' as the work done by the muscles is manageable - but because they are such big muscles, they absolutely burn through the oxygen in your blood, making your heart pump faster and your lungs work harder, which is where the pain comes from - especially after already having done other big excercises!

I amazed myself when I did the first pull up today. I braced myself for the struggle, went to pull, and whoosh! I flew off the ground. Obviously it got tougher the further I went in, but crucially this week it wasn't muscle fatigue that was holding me back like in previous weeks, I was just completely out of breath. I was impressed with 20 circuits, as last week was tough, struggling every day pretty much, but today was pretty nice. I suppose the weekend rest helps . My nephew was also watching me and mocking me when I was doing the squats :p then goes back to playing Minecraft when I do the pull-ups...

Frigging hard today. The push ups on set 4 and 5 were very hard, I could feel my face going red as I was pushing through them. Bizarrely, pushups used to be easier, but maybe it's because I can do the pull ups and chin ups now that I'm tiring my arms out much faster than before. No worries though, got it done! Failed the third pull-up on set 4, but I just had another go and go it.

I say ~20 because my nephew was talking to me, so I stopped at 15 minutes having done 13 rounds, then I carried on half hour later but felt like I was cheating, so just did another two sets in two minutes which were pretty much guaranteed from before and called it a day. It's supposed to be a rest week anyway, so no biggy.

So Wk 4 was feb 06, week 5 = 13, week 6=20 week 7=27th. So I missed week 6 completely, and week 4 and 5 only did day 1. Well, that won't do will it?

(note, it misses my week 6 of non-action)

Time to jump back on the horse. Work is a lot of work; but I know if I'm determined I can do this and achieve my goals. Diet has fallen off too, but will get that back on track. Just need to get myself refocused.